Does it really not work? It seems to have done okay in various contexts - Maoism in China and Ba'athism in the Arab world stand out to me. Maoism evolved and became very successful. Ba'athism mostly fell apart with the Arab Spring revolutions (the Syrian civil war is the last stand), but it lasted a long time and brought a lot of improvements to some really weak countries.
Heck, consider Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh's revolution survived years of the most powerful nation on Earth dropping more firepower on the tiny nation than was dropped in all of WWII. They won, America left, and Vietnam is a modern communist state.
Then again, I don't completely believe this... I'm kind of under the spell of Tolstoy right now, and tend to think that history just sort of happens, and we attribute the ebb and flow of it to the success or failure of individual leaders and their decisions, ignoring the broader forces. A lot of what led to success in these countries was going to happen regardless.
preemptive edit: Yes, I know these were murderous dictatorships. No need to mansplain how wrong I am, guys.
What about history not just 'sort of happening' but instead, changes in the means of production lead social change. e.g. Industrial Revolution, Factorization of production.
This is how a marxist views histories progression and I feel it is more applicable and holds up under backtesting than 'history just sort of happens'
Mao was a man of the people, who led his country to greatness, no backpedaling necessary.
Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly, technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man theory, where social change is enacted by the decisions (good or bad) of powerful and important individuals.
Read Marx, but read Tolstoy too. Tolstoy argued that we all have 20/20 hindsight, and we like to argue how well our individual ideas or pet theories explain stuff that, well, just happened.
edit: I'm suddenly thinking of Bruce Sterling's novel Zeitgeist, a sort of magical-realism SF set around Y2K. When asked who would win the culture war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism, the central character said "The side with the most televisions".
Heck, consider Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh's revolution survived years of the most powerful nation on Earth dropping more firepower on the tiny nation than was dropped in all of WWII. They won, America left, and Vietnam is a modern communist state.
Then again, I don't completely believe this... I'm kind of under the spell of Tolstoy right now, and tend to think that history just sort of happens, and we attribute the ebb and flow of it to the success or failure of individual leaders and their decisions, ignoring the broader forces. A lot of what led to success in these countries was going to happen regardless.
preemptive edit: Yes, I know these were murderous dictatorships. No need to mansplain how wrong I am, guys.